Posts Tagged ‘Mossos d’Escuadra’

On Wednesday October 28 nine of us were arrested in connection with a new anti-terrorist operation orchestrated by the Catalan Regional Police in collusion with court number 3 of the Spanish National Court. After the ransacking and looting of our homes and the Libertarian Ateneo de Sants (an anarchist social center in Sants) we were taken to different police stations on the outskirts of Barcelona. The next day we were delivered to the Civil Guard and transferred to Madrid. On Friday at noon we were brought before Judge Juan Pablo Gonzalez. The judge ordered two of us to be released with charges, 6 of us to be bailed upon payment of a bail surety and unconditional imprisonment for our comrade who is currently locked up in Soto del Real prison.
We the detainees who at present are back on the street wish to make a series of reflections and political positions:

The generic accusation against all 9 of us is “belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims.” Specifically we are charged with being part of ‘GAC-FAI-IRF,’ which as we all know is a concept that has been constructed by the police. A set of acronyms which they have quite calculatedly mixed together – the coordination of anarchist collectives (GAC) along with the ‘signature’ used internationally by some groups to claim acts of sabotage (FAI–IRF).

The construction of this organizational framework gives the police all of the repressive
resources that the anti-terrorism laws provide: closed courts, greater legal uncertainty, much tougher sentences for comrades convicted of carrying out certain actions, isolation, special prison regimes, the criminalization of personal friendships / partners and relatives, amplified media coverage and social stigmatization etc. It is enough to say that during the whole process of our detention – from the moment we saw our homes being invaded and looted right up until we were brought before the judge – we did not even know what we were being accused of. (more…)

Text written a week ago about Pandora’s police operation in Spain
against anarchists

The morning of Tuesday the 16th of December has surprised us with a wave
of house raids and arrests. Surprised us? We are not going to lie. Let’s
start again. The morning of the 16th of December has NOT surprised us. The
autonomous Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, and the Guardia Civil
and judiciary powers of the Audiencia Nacional stormed more than ten
houses and a few anarchist spaces in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa and
Madrid, with house raids, arrests, confiscation of propaganda material and
information, to also use the occasion to enter and plunder, with the
entire riot police team of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Kasa de la Muntanya, a
squatted place that has existed for 25 years.

According to the media, which as usual are proving their role as police
spokespersons, the goal of these arrests is to break up “a criminal
organisation with terrorist goals and a violent anarchist character”.
Although it seems easy to repeat an often used phrase, we will do it
anyway: the only criminal organisation that terrorises people with its
violent character is the State and its tentacles: the media, the juridical
apparatus, its repressive bodies and its politicians, whatever spectre
they belong to. (more…)

Bank account number in solidarity with comrades arrested in Operation Pandora in Madrid and Barcelona-

ES68 3025 0001 19 1433523907 (Caixa d’Enginyers)

For more info: solidaridadylucha(a)riseup.net

At least 15 people were arrested during raids in Spain on December 17th for being part of an “anarchist terror organization” in what the Spanish government is calling ‪#‎OperacionPandora‬.

At quarter past five, an operation consisting of Mossos d’Esquadra mobilized to carry out an operation against the Libertario movement. So far, the Mossos have raided the Kasa de la Montanya, the Libertarian Ateneo de Sant Andreu, the Anarchist Ateneo de Poble Sec and several private homes.

On orders from the Spanish National Court, in an operation ordered by Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez, the agents have raided the Kasa de la Muntanya, a squat which this year celebrates twenty five years of occupation. They busted the main entrance of the house to gain access while a police helicopter with spotlights hovered over the building. The twenty inhabitants of the house had to retreat into the gym whilst the police forced entry into the building. At the time of the police raid, the building had two children aged five and six years. The Mossos separated one of the kids from his father on the ground floor.

The police confiscated all mobile phones, laptops and computer devices that were found on the premises. Agents seized all types of documentation, while numerous electric home workshop tools were also confiscated in order to help the police construct their narrative.

About fifty people installed a roadblock on Travessera de Dalt, in a spontaneous act of solidarity with the Kasa de la Muntanya, until riot police dispersed them a few minutes after eight o’clock. Subsequently the solidarity group moved to the Plaza Lesseps and called for more protests.

From the outside of the house located in the neighborhood of Gràcia district Salut, witnesses heard several firecrackers and said they could see in lights of several flashlights inside the building. The police operation is made ​​up of agents from the Information Division of the Mossos d’Esquadra, accompanied by a large number of members of the Mobile Brigade which, among other tasks, formed a perimeter around the whole area and denied any access to the home.

I was stopped by the police on the path to the gas station. What started as what I thought was a random ID check turned into me being arrested due to false allegations by the police, a night in custody and me now facing a trial. The fact that I was not from this area played a big role throughout the confrontation, and resulted in fascist remarks and police violence.

I can only assume that the reason behind this repression is to divided us and to keep the protest local. But it isn´t local, it is a global struggle that affects us all and there for shouldn’t be left to address by a small group of people that feels responsible, but by anyone with a social and environmental conscience. (more…)

Starting Monday, 3 October, the Mossos d’Escuadra, the Catalan police force, began a wave of arrests targeting people as they left their homes. It quickly came out that they had been ordered by the Spanish government in Madrid to arrest all 22 people identified via media photos in connection with the 15 June blockade of the Catalan parliament, in which politicians eventually had to be brought in via helicopter in order to approve the austerity cutbacks. Multiple politicians attempting to enter by car or on foot were insulted, spit on, and even spraypainted.

Since then, the mossos in conjunction with the media had adopted a strategy of demonization, taking advantage of the reformist sectors of the popular movement that naively sought to use a good image in the media to “spread their message” in order to get the movement pacifists to play the role of police and isolate the more radical elements. They avoided making any arrests so as not to unite the movement in solidarity.

Madrid, known for a different style of policing than the Catalan state, changed the rules of the game this October when they ordered the arrests of the troublemakers long-since identified by the Catalan police, thanks to the proliferation of filming at protests. In the first two days of arrests, 10 people were arrested, cited, and given a date to present themselves at the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, in some cases in as few as three days. By Wednesday, lawyers had obtained the full list of 22 people, and curiously, nearly all of them are anarchists.

Anarchists make up an influential and vocal minority within the popular movement that began occupying Plaça Catalunya on the 15th of May, but they were numerically insignificant among the 200,000 people blockading parliament that day in June, and weren’t even the majority of those at the frontlines, blockading streets with dumpsters and spitting on politicians.

So far, it seems the State will have a hard time succeeding in this attempted repression, as the anarchists are well connected in their neighborhood assemblies and have broad-based support. What’s more, in the intervening months pacifism has largely been abandoned by many sectors of the movement as an undignified, ineffective tool of grassroots politicians.

The first day of the arrests, a spontaneous solidarity demo convened in the evening in Pl. Catalunya, drawing nearly a thousand people. In a rare achievement, the demo took over Las Ramblas, which it left covered in spraypainted slogans of solidarity, and marched on the Generalitat, the seat of the Catalan government, where hundreds of people shouted and vented their rage at the police for half an hour before deconvening. More solidarity actions are planned.

Update:
On Thursday, a second solidarity protest was held, this time drawing around 3,000 people who marched on the Interior Ministry, chanting largely anarchist and anti-capitalist slogans.